Chapter 17
Two floors up from Helena’s hospital room, Bethany Sutton was on bed rest and out of her mind with misery.
What had begun with a warning from Dr. Schreiber and a week or two of “slowing down” had eventually crescendoed to too many surgeries, too many events, too many family parties, and too much stress.
It was like she hadn’t been able to stop herself.
She regretted it, to say the least.
Now, Bethany was hooked up to IV drips, splayed back, wearing a hospital gown that she thought made her look old and washed-out. She was nearly five months pregnant, and the baby made himself known under the blankets, a little mound that said, “Your life is different now! Listen to your body!”
Rod, Maddie, Tommy, and Phoebe were all there for a visit, eating snacks and asking Bethany how she was feeling.
She’d been at the hospital since yesterday morning, a strange time of urgency that had begun with tears and ended with her collapse.
Rod had stayed overnight with her last night, in a separate cot they’d wheeled in.
But Bethany felt lonely and alienated despite having her family here.
That afternoon, before coming here, Rod had taken the kids shopping for school supplies.
Incredibly, school started in two weeks, and they needed all kinds of pencils, notebooks, binders, and so on.
A lot of their curriculum was available on computers and tablets as well, which wasn’t entirely thrilling to Bethany.
But the future was inevitable. She knew better than to fight against it.
Just as her children prepared to pack up and head home for dinner, Dr. Marsh appeared in the doorway. He was a doctor from another floor who often worked in the emergency room if they were short-staffed. Bethany eyed him curiously.
“Dr. Marsh?”
Dr. Marsh stepped into the room, glancing at Bethany’s family. “Hello. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“We’re just finishing up,” Bethany said, watching as Tommy threw his backpack over his shoulders and mussed up his hair. Apparently, that was the style he was after.
“I have a patient asking for you,” Dr. Marsh explained.
Rod pressed a kiss onto Bethany’s forehead and said he’d be back later, after he made sure the kids were all set up at home.
She squeezed his hand and said, “You can sleep at home, if you want to.” She knew it wasn’t comfortable to stay overnight at a hospital.
She’d spent more nights than she could count at hospitals, and they were never really quiet. Not fully.
“I’m coming back,” Rod said sternly.
Bethany and Dr. Marsh watched Rod go. Bethany tried to shift higher in her bed but discovered the angle was all wrong.
“Don’t,” Dr. Marsh said. “You’re on bed rest, remember?”
Bethany rolled her eyes. “So what’s the problem? With this patient?”
“She’s got a very advanced liver disease. Autoimmune cholangitis. Apparently, you were her doctor previously?”
Bethany searched her mind for any sign of liver disease. But she couldn’t recall anyone in the previous year or two. “Do you have a name for me?”
“Helena Rogers,” he said.
Bethany nearly jumped out of bed at that.
“Liver disease,” she breathed, shaking her head.
It made sense, now. The skeletal nature of the body.
The strange coloring. “But she wasn’t my patient.
I met her in the emergency waiting room.
She’d brought someone else in, but then fainted on me.
She refused to be helped. She didn’t have health insurance. ”
Dr. Marsh looked surprised. “She has health insurance now. A very good one, in fact.”
“You’re kidding.” Bethany crossed and uncrossed her arms, feeling frantic. “And she’s here?”
“She’s here. She was out hiking and called an ambulance for herself.”
“Hiking?”
“She isn’t making a lot of sense,” Dr. Marsh said. “But it sounds like you don’t know anything I don’t know.”
“I don’t know anything,” Bethany said, thinking again of Matteo, of how he’d said that Helena had pushed him out of her life.
It struck Bethany at once—Helena thought she was dying.
She thought she had a limited time on earth. She’d given up. Perhaps she’d given up the moment she’d received her diagnosis?
Why, then, did she get health insurance? It didn’t make sense.
“I want to see her,” Bethany said, suddenly overcome. It had been a long time since she’d experienced such a connection with a patient. (Not that Helena was her patient.)
“You’re on bed rest,” Dr. Marsh reminded her with a funny laugh. “Remember? You have to look out for number one most of all.”
“I’m so tired of this,” Bethany groaned.
Dr. Marsh scratched his stubble, looking contemplative.
“Listen,” he said. “I don’t mind if you make your way down there—room 33.
But use a wheelchair, for crying out loud.
Don’t stress yourself more than you already have.
We know how you are, Dr. Sutton. You have all that big-city hospital energy.
But we’re just on Nantucket Island. People come here to relax. ”
“Relax?” Bethany smiled. “I don’t know the meaning of the word.”
Rod returned around nine that evening with a full report of dinner and what had gone down at home.
Apparently, Maddie probably had a new boyfriend, as she’d spent all night talking on her cell in her bedroom.
Phoebe had forced Tommy into a faux stage play on the veranda, yelling at him when he didn’t memorize his lines in a few seconds flat.
Bethany smiled. It was bizarre to hear stories about her real life from here, her second home at the hospital. More bizarre still was to be a patient at the same hospital where, normally, she walked faster than any human usually managed and saved lives.
“I miss you all,” she said to Rod, her heart gushing.
“We miss you, too. But we need you and the baby to be healthy!” Rod said.
Bethany dug her head deeper into the pillow, again thinking of Helena, of how lonely she might be on the first floor. “Listen, Rod,” she said. “There’s a woman here at the hospital I need to talk to. She’s in Room 33 down below. Do you think you could take me?”
Rod furrowed his brow. “Can’t that wait till tomorrow?”
“I don’t think so,” Bethany admitted.
It took a little coaxing. But finally, Rod helped Bethany gently into a wheelchair, then rolled her into the hall and toward the elevator.
Bethany had donned a big sweater to hide her hospital gown beneath.
But she didn’t let herself think too much about what Helena would say of her condition.
She was looking for Bethany. She wanted whatever solace Bethany brought.
Bethany half wondered if her own interest in Helena’s condition had prompted Helena to think about her own future, to demand more for herself.
But she guessed it had more to do with something else—the beauty of sunsets, the gorgeousness of living on Nantucket.
Or maybe it had more to do with someone else, like Matteo.
Outside Room 33, Bethany asked Rod to step in and ask Helena if she was okay to see visitors.
Rod did, then returned and said, “She’s ready for you.
” He wheeled her in, then stepped out of the room, leaving the women alone.
Bethany found herself beside a tanner and more vibrant version of the weak, gaunt woman she’d met months before.
She was connected to an IV, and her heart monitor beeped at a comfortable pace.
Helena looked at Bethany as though she couldn’t believe her eyes.
“I’m pregnant,” Bethany explained with the wave of her hand. “Bed rest. It’s miserable.”
Helena nodded. “I’ve been on bed rest for what feels like the past five years.”
“Then you know how annoying it is.”
“I know what it’s like to feel like you’re going to spend the rest of your life in bed,” Helena affirmed, her voice floaty.
Bethany reached over to take Helena’s hand, right there on Helena’s bed.
“It’s been a while since I was a patient in a hospital,” Helena admitted.
“I was in and out of hospitals all the time there for a while. For my parents. They had better health insurance than I did.” She laughed gently.
“Honestly, I can’t believe I have health insurance now. I can’t believe I gave in to all that.”
“It’s wonderful,” Bethany said, wondering what had changed in Helena’s life. “You can get the help you need.”
“I don’t know if I can,” Helena admitted. “But it’s nice to know that I might be comfortable during my last days, whenever they come. And…” She trailed off. “And I’ve been having a better time than I have in years. I started making art again. It’s gone better than I ever could have imagined.”
Bethany realized now that she’d always known Helena was an artist, that there was something magical and mystical about the woman’s soul that had to go somewhere—into her art, into the world.
Tears began to drizzle down Bethany’s cheeks.
“For years, I’ve wondered—is this my last week?
My last hour? I haven’t been able to plan.
Honestly, it’s been the worst kind of torture.
The only reason I forced myself to leave my hometown was that I ran into my ex’s new girlfriend and realized how awful I must look to them. I didn’t want to be seen.”
Bethany filled her lungs. “What led you to Nantucket?”
“My father was from here,” Helena breathed.
“He always talked about it like it was the most beautiful painting he’d ever seen.
And now, being here, seeing the sunlight on the water every day, I get what he meant.
I don’t get out much. I hardly see more than my own stretch of the beach.
But that was more than enough, until today when I found myself with the stupid idea to go for a long, long walk.
” She tried to laugh, but the smile fell off her lips.
Bethany pushed for more details. She could feel Rod in the hallway, beaming his need at her to go back upstairs, to get back in bed. But she had to stay here with Helena a little while longer.
Helena explained that her ex-husband had called to ask for money. “It destroyed my sense of self,” she said. “I can’t explain it. He still has this awful hold on me.”
“What a monster,” Bethany said. She again thought of Matteo at the burger restaurant, the ache in his eyes. “Helena, what happened with Matteo?”
Helena grimaced and let her eyes drop. “He sent me flowers. He wrote his number on a card. I haven’t known how to call him.”
“And why not?” Bethany asked. “There was obviously something beautiful between you two.”
“We didn’t know each other,” Helena said. “Not really. It was all probably in my head.”
“I don’t think it was.”
Helena had begun to cry again. “It isn’t fair to him to bring him into a life that’s already over. I’m doing my best to ‘carpe diem,’ of course. But that’s on my own terms. That has nothing to do with him, his story, or his future. He’s a beautiful person. I don’t want to hurt him.”
Helena’s eyes were filled with a longing that Bethany couldn’t fully name. It was clear she was hungry for fresh stories, for a new reality for herself. But she didn’t think her body could handle it.
“Don’t you think you owe it to yourself to explain it to him?” Bethany asked, finally. “Don’t you think he should be able to make his own decisions about who’s in his life, about who he spends his time with?”
Helena raised her eyebrows but remained quiet and thoughtful, as though she’d never considered that side of it before.